| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 31721 |
| QUOTATION: | Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | James Joyce (1882–1941), Irish author. Originally published in The Irish Homestead, August 13, 1904. “The Sisters,” Dubliners, ed. Robert Scholes, Viking (1968).
Paralysis is Joyce’s key word for the Dubliners collection. For Joyce, the word symbolized the condition of Ireland in the modern world. |
| BIOGRAPHY: | Columbia Encyclopedia. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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